How do jury trials work?

0:04At common law, it was always 12, and that's probably how the founders understood it. About half a century ago, the Supreme Court blessed reducing the size of the jury as low as six. They said five is not enough, but six seems like it's close enough. At the time, they also said, well, and the jury doesn't have to be unanimous.

0:26Now, the Supreme Court has recently revisited that and said, no, actually, the jury does need to be unanimous. It always needed to be unanimous in a criminal case, not necessarily in civil cases. But at the moment, they're still allowing some variation in the size of the jury. But there are some calls to overrule that and to go back to the original meaning of the Sixth Amendment, which most people think was a 12th person unanimous jury in criminal cases. In a civil case like a car accident, a jury just asks, is it more likely than not that the defendant was at fault? If the plaintiff shows 50.1% just a little over half, then that's enough to say, yes, we can collect money from the defendant for the fender bender.

1:14But criminal cases aren't just about money. They're about stigmatizing someone as a criminal and very often depriving that person of liberty. So there's a much more protective standard. At common law, it's always been that you have to prove the defendant's guilt of every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, and that unanimity requirement now means every juror has to find every element beyond a reasonable doubt.

1:40You could have a conspiracy theory or a speculation of the contrary. But if there's any reasonable possible explanation, the jury is supposed to find not guilty. Not guilty doesn't necessarily mean innocent. There might be some question. It might even be that the person could be held civilly liable. We don't want to throw someone in jail. We don't want to brand him a criminal unless we're really sure the person did it.